The Super Bowl was fun, but the Tide ads mocking ads were funny. Here’s what you need to know about the big game and everything else to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door.(You can also get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)
1. Super Bowl
The Philadelphia Eagles fly sky high after stunning Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and the rest of the New England Patriots to win their first Super Bowl. Eagles QB Nick Foles, filling in for the injured Carson Wentz, played the game of his life, throwing for three TDs and catching a touchdown pass too. You don’t see that everyday.
But this is the Super Bowl, after all, so there was so much more going on than just what happened on the field. Justin Timberlake put on an awesome halftime show, complete with a purple-soaked tribute to hometown legend Prince. Pink fought off the flu and spit out a throat lozenge to belt out a spirited National Anthem (which saw no protests from players). We all thought the world had come to an end when NBC had about 30 seconds of dead air during the broadcast. Savvy marketing ploy? Political stunt? Naw, just an equipment malfunction. And nobody liked Ram Truck’s use of an MLK speech during its ad. (Here are the best and worst ads.)
Philly’s fans flooded the streets to celebrate, even though a few mistook the celebration for a riot and flipped over cars and looted a few stores. Not all of the Eagles will celebrate in DC when a presidential invite comes their way. Some players have already said they won’t go to the White House to meet President Trump.
2. FBI memo
We could be a step closer to seeing what’s in the Democrats’ version of the FBI memo. Dems on the House Intelligence Committee are expected to push for a vote to release their memo today. It’s believed this memo would rebut many of the abuse allegations made against the FBI in the GOP memo released on Friday. If the committee votes to release, President Trump will have five days to object to putting it out.
Speaking of the President, he said over the weekend that the GOP’s memo “totally vindicates” him in the Russia investigation, but some of his fellow Republicans wouldn’t go that far. CNN’s Brian Stelter and Stephen Collinson ponder how the memo once again reveals the deep political divide in this country. And oh, in case you’ve forgotten — unless Congress reaches a funding deal, the government could shut down at the end of the week.
3. Winter Olympics
The whole point of the Olympics is to lift us all above politics, but politics are hard to avoid when the Games are held on the Korean Pensinsula. Vice President Mike Pence takes the father of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died after being jailed in North Korea, to this week’s Opening Ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea, a move sure to tick off the North. Meanwhile, North Korea plans a big military parade on the eve of the Games. No wonder some South Koreans are grumbling that the country’s big moment in the international spotlight is being overshadowed by the North.
4. Amtrak crashes
It’s been a tough time for Amtrak as of late. The national passenger railroad service has had four deadly crashes in just two months. The latest came this weekend in South Carolina, after an Amtrak train smashed into a stationary freight train, killing two Amtrak workers and injuring 116 people. A railroad track switch, locked in the wrong position, may have caused the crash, an NTSB official said.
5. Greece protests
More than 100,000 people took the streets in Athens to protest neighboring Macedonia’s use of the name Macedonia. The small Balkan country, once part of the former Yugoslavia, gained independence in 1991 and wanted to call itself Macedonia. But Greeks don’t like that because they feel it infringes on the northern part of Greece that’s also called Macedonia. They also say the people in the country of Macedonia have no cultural connection to the Greek Macedonia. The two countries restarted talks on this controversy last month, thus spurring the protests.
